Incoming Freshman Tierra Allen to Ignite QU Volleyball

After acquiring Ray Allen in 2007, the Boston Celtics achieved the greatest turnaround in NBA history and won the league championship in 2008.

Now the Quinnipiac University Bobcats are hoping Allen’s daughter, Tierra, will help them turn around the volleyball program, which finished last in the Northeast Conference last season but seeks to make the conference tournament in the new season that begins in late August.

Tierra Allen is one of five new recruits announced by the school last week, which seeks to improve a young team that recorded a 6-24 mark last year and failed to make the conference tournament, which is limited to the top four teams.

Allen played three years of high school volleyball at Crestwood High in South Carolina before transferring to Wellesley High in Massachusetts. She achieved league all-star and region player of the year honors in high school, where she averaged 10 kills, 10 service points and three assists per match.

She also played club volleyball for the Boston based Smash! team, which is where she was spotted by Bobcats coach Robin Sparks.

“I saw her play in a tournament in Albany and went to one of her practices with the club team,” Sparks said. “She played with Smash! in the New England Winterfest at the Hartford Convention Center.

“After I saw her play, I expressed interest and she was interested as well. We’re always looking for outside hitters to come in," he said. "She’s a great jump server with power behind her swing. She has the potential to become very good in the right training environment.”

Allen joins fellow freshmen Krista Bennett, Tanner Celestin and Brittanie Robinson and junior college transfer Samantha Jablonski as the new Bobcats recruits.

Sparks downplays Allen’s heralded lineage.

“We recruited her because she’s Tierra, not because of who her father is," he said. "We kept it quiet when she visited because it’s important for her to be Tierra. The team feels very strongly about that.”

Last year’s team had no seniors and suffered from injuries and illness that forced Sparks to bring in softball players to finish the season.

“We lost a lot of 3-2 matches and went from fourth to last in 10 days,” Sparks said.

The team was 15th in the country in aces per game and defeated teams in the division it had never beat before.

“We broke a lot of records for Quinnipiac volleyball, but things didn’t fall our way at the end of the year,” Sparks said.

The new season starts with practices in mid-August and pre-season tournaments in late August. The Bobcats will travel to Los Angeles for the first tournament, matching up against UCLA, Loyola Marymount and Cal State Fullerton. Then they’ll play a tournament in Maryland against VCU, Xavier and the Univ. of Maryland before co-hosting tournaments with the Univ. of Hartford and Yale.

The tournament games count on the Bobcats overall record but not on the conference record.

“Conference play is what matters to make the NCAA tournament,” Sparks said. She said she hopes Tierra Allen and the other incoming recruits will lead the Bobcats to that goal.